Coming to you today from the journey of Team Tongue is a brief recap of our most recent escapades. As chief photographer and video editor, I was tasked with the exciting goal of filming the process of cooking our Uyghur meal. Teammates Billie and Zach built our tandoor oven over the course of several hours this past Thursday (Props to them for some crazy hard work). Billie was also able to capture much of the process which I am currently editing together for a portion of our final project.
With the Tandoor complete, our essential structure for cooking the meal out of the way, we began preparing our dishes early afternoon on Saturday. For nearly seven hours our group toiled over our eternally smoking (and as Zach found out, highly-flammable) homemade, oven. Our aim was to cook the entire meal using traditional means and in my humble opinion we were most successful.
Interestingly enough, our cooking session coincided with a reading assignment concerning the Uyghur people and the Xinjiang region. As it should happen, our three dishes matched up with three of the “local specialties,” mentioned in the book, Xinjiang, the Land and the People. If anything, it was good to know we were on the right track.
Seven hours later we sat down to nang bread, chicken kebabs, pilaf and tea. I was hardly able to take a few pictures of our display before Zach tucked into the heavenly spread. This commenced the consumption of absorbent amounts of food. Worth the wait, the singed arm-hair, and a shirt that will eternally smell like the inside of an earthen oven. 100 percent.
Below you will find some photos-a teaser-preceding the unveiling of the main event.